Camerimage Cinematography Festival Maintains Its Appeal in a Challenging Year

For many families, Christmas is an exciting, fun-filled time marked by colourful decorations, a delicious dinner and the constant chatter of friends and family. For hundreds of thousands of people living with dementia though, the festive season can be challenging at best and, at worst, terrifying and confusing. One in three people born in the UK today will go on to develop dementia in their lifetime, and like so many health conditions it is indiscriminate.

Tom Waits is set to join Iggy Pop for a rare interview, which will span two hours on BBC 6 Music.The discussion will mark one of the first new interviews the iconic American singer-songwriter has taken part in during recent years, and will see him co-host a special show with punk veteran Iggy Pop.Taking place on Sunday, December 3, the show will air on BBC Radio 6 Music between 4pm and 6pm. It will also see the two converse about their time in the music industry, share anecdotes from their personal lives and spin some of the famous tracks that have influenced them over the years.These songs include ‘Bangkok’ by Alex Chiltern, ‘Bye Bye Butterfly’ by Pauline Oliveros, ‘Moon River’ by Frank Ocean and ‘Colorado Kool-Aid’ by Johnny Paycheck, as well as the first spoken word song that Waits heard on the radio, and a couple of noteworthy TV theme tunes from the ‘60s.In between records, Waits will share stories with Iggy Pop, including how he hitched a ride towards Los Angeles with Eden Ahbez – the songwriter who composed ‘Nature Boy’, which became a hit for Nat King Cole.Iggy Pop is also set to share some anecdotes of his own too, such as the time he came across Captain Beefheart eating breakfast in L.A., but was wise enough not to disturb him.Waits has rarely stepped into the public eye to discuss his music career since he released his last studio album, ‘Bad As Me’ back in 2011.Since the release over a decade ago, Waits also celebrated the 50th anniversary of his 1973 debut LP ‘Closing Time’ buy sharing a new vinyl reissue.He played one of his last live shows back in 2008, taking place in a tent venue in Dublin named the Rat Cellar.

“There’s always another game being played, isn’t there?” The game on top of the game is the overall theme of the three stellar seasons of “Slow Horses,” one of the best Apple TV+ original dramas. The first two six-episode installments premiered in 2022, offering fans of spy dramas largely standalone jolts of espionage-driven entertainment, and there is zero dip in quality in the upcoming third chapter of this excellent series.

Emily Longeretta The ATX TV Festival is beginning to roll out its programming for Season 13. The event, taking place May 30-June 2 in Austin, Texas, will include both “Suits” and “Halt and Catch Fire” reunions. The creatives and cast of “Suits” will get back together, marking five years since the series finale.

Will Tizard Contributor With enough passion and grit, powerful, personal stories made one-man-band style can stand up against the best work of top Hollywood talent with far greater budgets. Warwick Thornton’s “The New Boy,” inspired by his own experiences of being packed off to a Christian boarding school in Australia as a youngster, was in development for 18 years, finally coming together when Cate Blanchett read the script and suggested taking it on through her company Dirty Films. After working with him to adapt the lead role into the character of a nun who fills in for a priest whose death has been kept secret, the project began to come together, with newcomer actor Aswan Reid as the titular boy who begins to work wonders.

Will Tizard Contributor Cinematographer Linus Sandgren says he and director Emerald Fennell relied on their emotions and instincts to conjure the “gothic” look of “Saltburn,” the hybrid psychological horror and dark comedy just screened at the Camerimage cinematography festival in Torun, Poland. The film’s tight Academy aspect ratio, for one thing, was an idea that arose only after meeting with Fennell, who wrote the over-the-top story of a strange, middle-class Oxford student, Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), infiltrating the world of the filthy rich one sunny summer.

Will Tizard Contributor Indie and art film producer Jon Kilik, unlike many, remains hopeful for the personal, mid-budget movie for grown-ups. “Those are the films directors love to make and audiences still love,” says Kilik, being feted this week at Poland’s Camerimage cinematography festival for work of special visual sensitivity.

Will Tizard Contributor Cinematographer and director Warwick Thornton scored top honors Saturday at the Camerimage cinematography film festival for his magical tale of an aboriginal youth, “The New Boy,” which film jurors called a distinctive “portrait of an extinguished spirituality.” Thornton, in accepting the Golden Frog, said he had been so moved by the cinematography work onscreen at the fest, a top global event for directors of photography, he’d been “tearing for a week.” Ed Lachman, director of photography for Pablo Larrain’s horror fantasy “El Conde,” inspired by the life of Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet, won the Silver Frog for what the jury called “cinematic high poetry,” while the Bronze Frog and Audience Award went to cinematographer Robbie Ryan for his Gothic dream-like imagery in Emma Stone-starrer “Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Actor Peter Dinklage, honored with a festival director’s prize, expressed his gratitude for the Frog statuette, noting actors are “nothing without our collaborators,” followed onstage by cinematographer Mandy Walker, who also served as main jury president, also honored for her work on films such as “Elvis” and “Mulan.” Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi, one of the founders of the European Film Academy, was also feted for lifetime achievement in directing, as was cinematographer Peter Biziou (“The Wall,” “The Truman Show”) in the closing gala, held in Camerimage’s cavernous Jordanki screening hall.

This year’s winners at Camerimage Film Festival in Toruń, Poland were unveiled Saturday, with The New Boy, Warwick Thornton’s drama about an indigenous boy taken in at a mysterious remote monastery, taking the top prize.

Howdy, Insiders. Jesse Whittock with you to run through another week in international film and TV news.. Don’t forget to sign up to the newsletter here. And a fair warning here, this newsletter does include The Crown season 6 spoilers.

Last year’s awards cycle was a big one for indie public relations firm EBComs, which specializes in behind-the-camera talent. Out of the year’s five cinematography Oscar nominees, three were EBComs clients, and the company ultimately walked away with two wins —James Friend (cinematography, All Quiet On The Western Front) and Paul Rogers (editing, Everything Everywhere All at Once). This month, the company, headed by Aussie native Meredith Emmanuel, celebrates its 25th anniversary. 

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Paula Shugart is departing the Miss Universe Organization after 23 years as president, she revealed on Thursday night in El Salvador — where this year’s event is set to take place on Saturday. Shugart’s exit comes following news that Thailand-based Miss Universe owner JKN Global Group had filed for bankruptcy in its country, but insiders said Shugart’s announcement was unrelated to that news and had been in the works for a long time prior to that news.

When Bradley Cooper’s sophomore directorial outfit Maestro, an ambitious and extravagant Leonard Bernstein biopic, debuted at Venice, none of the film’s stars or crew made it on to the red carpet. SAG was 51 days deep into its strike against the studios. 

Paul Ridd, a long-term acquisitions exec at Picturehouse Cinemas, has been named director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF).

Adam Driver’s lowkey visit to Poland’s EnergaCamerimage Film Festival turned into a viral internet meme over the weekend after the actor gave an expletive response to a question during an audience Q&A following a screening of Ferrari. 

Argylle trailer has landed courtesy of Universal. The film is the latest from Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, X-Men: Origins series, Kingsman) and stars Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, John Cena, Dua Lipa, Bryan Cranston, Sofia Boutella, Ariana DeBose, Catherine O’Hara and Samuel L. Jackson.

Two-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Ed Lachman looked shattered by the time he sat down with us for an interview here at EnergaCamerimage in Torun, Poland. 

With SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP reaching a tentative agreement on a new contract, our industry’s biggest stars, previously forbidden from participating in the promotion of movies distributed and made by struck studios and streamers, are finally joining the party. 

Christopher Vourlias Sofia Exarchou’s “Animal” won the Golden Alexander at the 64th Thessaloniki Film Festival on Sunday, marking the first time in 30 years that a Greek film took home the top honors at the country’s longest-running film event. Exarchou’s sophomore feature, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, was praised by Variety’s Jessica Kiang as “a poignant portrait of life amid the sequins and the seediness of a Greek resort.” The film follows a group of entertainers at an all-inclusive island resort preparing for the busy tourist season who are forced to wrestle with the dark reality that the show must go on as the sultry Mediterranean nights turn violent.

A thick fog hung over Torun, Poland, this evening as the 31st edition of the city’s EnergaCamerimage Film Festival cruised into gear with a lengthy opening ceremony at the stylish Jordanki Culture Centre.